Innovations: Accelerating the Acquisition Kill Chain
By Captain Tyler “Weasel” Flansburg (USAF)
August 4, 2021
Preparing Air and Space Force’s top-tier acquirers to meet the operational needs of tomorrow’s multi-domain battlespace.
Air and
Space Force acquisition professionals are about to be educated on par
with the service’s top guns: Weapons Officers, who serve as military
leaders’ key advisors. Weapons officers receive the world’s most
advanced training in weapons and tactics.
The new Acquisition
Instructors Course (AQIC), with its advanced training curriculum, seeks
to provide the same quality to top-tier acquirers. The
five-and-one-half-month graduate-level program will be open to civilians
and military members in contracting, as well as in program management,
finance engineering, and more.
Students will attend top-flight
classes in innovative buying techniques—such as commercial solutions
openings and other transaction agreements, and digital engineering—and
will interact with edgy shops like AFWERX, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology AI Accelerator, and RAPIDx, as well as SpaceX and Amazon.
They
will return to their units ready to share what they’ve learned and to
make it easier for Air Force programs to access the tech and services
they need from the best suppliers, whether they’re legacy contractors or
new to government.
The military’s kill chain is a six-stage
target sequence: Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, and Assess (F2T2EA). A
tactical advantage in the kill chain equates to a higher probability of
mission success and survivability. The warfighter who completes the
F2T2EA sequence first is the victor.
“In today’s dynamic
environment ... if we are to beat our competitors in conflict, we must
also beat them in development and fielding of capability,” wrote General
C.Q. Brown, chief of staff of the Air Force, in his 2020 strategic
vision, “Accelerate Change or Lose.”1
For the
warfighter to execute the kill chain effectively, acquisition
professionals must reinforce the connective tissue between the
acquisition and operational communities and accelerate the acquisition
kill chain. Acquirers must successfully navigate the defense acquisition
system to transform warfighter needs to fielded capabilities. They must
accelerate innovation and fielding at the speed of relevance, ensuring
warfighter access to modern technology and state-of-the-art assets.
Our
warfighters are counting on acquisition professionals to deliver. It is
imperative for the Air Force to invest in a dynamic,
operator-integrated, and people-focused training to enable acquisition
professionals to out-execute and out-deliver our adversaries—today and
in the future.
In June 2020, General Stephen Wilson, former vice
chief of staff of the Air Force, officially directed the standup of the
Acquisition Instructor Course (AQIC). General Wilson charged the AQIC
with creating an Air Force advanced acquisition training curriculum
designed to train highly skilled acquisition instructors and leaders in
tactical and strategic knowledge to meet the operational needs of
tomorrow’s multi-domain battlespace.
The AQIC provides the
acquisition enterprise with a graduate-level training pipeline that
leverages the methodology of the Air Force Weapons School (USAFWS) and
strives to fully integrate acquisition professionals into the
schoolhouse, bringing together for the first time top-tier operators and
acquirers. There is a need for acquirers to fight side by side with
operators to find material solutions when today’s tactics, techniques,
and procedures no longer suffice.
In February 2021, General David
Allvin, the newly appointed vice chief of staff of the Air Force,
reaffirmed the Air Force’s drive to master both kill chains: “Rapid
technological advances and the increasing complexity of tomorrow’s
battlespace require operators and acquirers be in constant collaboration
to accelerate the acquisition kill chain, so our warfighters have
access to the most capable and state-of-the-art assets to maintain our
competitive advantage. It is strategically and tactically imperative to
recognize acquisition as a weapon system itself.”2
The
AQIC faces the challenge of acting as a vanguard of cultural change
within the broader acquisition enterprise as it works to bridge the gap
between acquirers and operators. Graduates of the course will drive
acquisition organizations to adopt a more mission-focused, intel-driven
decision methodology through constant operator collaboration and routine
cross-talks with acquisition intelligence organizations.
As a
forerunner in leading cultural change across the acquisition enterprise,
Major General Cameron G. Holt, Air Force deputy assistant secretary for
contracting, is focused on operationalizing the contracting enterprise.
He has charged contracting officers with educating themselves on the
missions they support, acting with urgency, and staying focused on
results versus merely following established processes.
General
Holt’s vision stresses a shift in thinking in key areas: moving from
compliance to mission focus, from advisor to leader, from defense to
offense, from linear thinking to systemic thinking, and from a
bureaucracy to an entrepreneurial environment. These concepts are
foundational tenets of the AQIC. In its collaboration with Air Force
Contracting, AQIC seeks to sow transition across the acquisition
enterprise.
The USAFWS teaches graduate-level instructor courses
that provide the world’s most advanced training in weapons and tactics.
The goal is to train students to be tactical experts in their combat
specialties while also mastering the art of battlespace dominance.
Weapons Officers (WOs)—the term used to identify USAFWS graduates—serve
as advisors to military leaders at all levels. WOs are the instructors
of instructors and take the slogan “Humble, Approachable, Credible” as
their creed. They are trained to integrate kinetic and nonkinetic
effects across the Air Force and the DoD, to achieve the synergistic
effects necessary to win our nation’s conflicts.
Inclusion as a
Weapons Squadron in the USAFWS is AQIC’s goal. It is a rigorous
process, and AQIC must fully prove its methodology to meet the Weapons
School’s high standards. “We’ve designed the course to bring Air Force
Weapons School rigor to the acquisition community and work toward
creating a network of Acquisition Weapon Officers who operate by the
creed of the Weapons School,” said Colonel Steve Smith, AQIC commandant.3
“If
we are going to outpace tomorrow’s threats, we must evolve our
acquisition paradigm to field credible capability with speed and
agility. The AQIC will build a cadre of future acquirers primed to
actively innovate with warfighters and commercial industry on the newest
tech to solve emerging threats rather than waiting for the ‘system’ to
generate formal requirements,” said Lieutenant General Duke Richardson,
military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for
acquisition, technology, and logistics.4 “Graduates of the
AQIC will propagate creative acquisition tactics and techniques across
our enterprise to ensure our adversaries are always playing catch-up.”
The
course, open to civilian and military members, spans across acquisition
career fields such as engineering, program management, contracting, and
financial management. It provides five and a half months of training,
executed in a multi-phased approach and focused on tactical acquisition
integration, operational-to-acquisition integration, and
industry-to-academia integration.
In the tactical acquisition
integration phase, students receive in-depth education in and exposure
to competencies including contracting, finance, program management,
system engineering, and logistics and sustainment. Students are immersed
in emergent techniques such as the Adaptive Acquisition Framework5, DevSecOps6,
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Engineering. They practice
unique approaches, such as Other Transaction Authority and Commercial
Solutions Openings. AQIC graduates return to acquisition organizations
as trained instructors, charged with bringing up the next generation of
acquisition leaders. They are expected to embody the cultural ethos of
their operational counterparts. Moreover, they serve as a network of
acquisition leaders, proliferating best practices and new authorities.
During
AQIC, students attend the Core I and Core II academic blocks given to
all Weapons School squadrons. Students expand their awareness of
warfighter needs and emerge as mission-focused leaders by integrating
with intel, cyber, aviation, missiles, space, and other operational
units in mission planning and execution. Graduates return to the
acquisition community versed in multi-domain operational relevance and
equipped with far-reaching relationships to leverage as they
continuously strengthen the ties between communities.
In the
industry-to-academia integration phase, students strengthen Air Force
engagement across industry and academia through collaboration with
partners such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology AI Accelerator,7 Georgia Tech Research Institute,8 Air Force Ventures,9 RAPIDx,10 Capital Factory,11 SpaceX,12 and Amazon.13
Graduates become champions for emerging technology, assimilating
industry and academia concepts to improve DoD acquisition execution
outcomes.
Major General James D. Peccia III, deputy assistant Air
Force secretary for budget, sees this era in acquisition and cultural
change as a moment of opportunity. “This is an exciting time for the
acquisition community, a time where acquirers are helping to lead and
shape warfighting capabilities and weapon systems at the beginning of
the process, where their expertise and knowledge can instruct what is
possible versus what is directed,” he said. “The AQIC will teach
acquisition professionals how and when to engage and ultimately provide
Air and Space Forces with an agile and better-informed acquisition
process.”14
AQIC Commandant Smith is keen on winning
acquisition professionals a spot next to the Air Force’s top-flight
Weapons Officers. “The Air Force Weapons School is Air Combat Command’s
premier warfighter training environment,” he said. “We know
acceptance into the Weapons School will improve not only our acquisition
process, but our Air and Space Force. It is the right thing to do, so
we need to meet that high bar and get the job done. Ultimately, we view
placing the Air Force and Space Force’s top-tier operators alongside its
top acquirers as fruitful ground to delivering more relevant technology
at speed.”15
*Disclaimer: The positions, opinions,
and statements in this column are those of the authors and do not
reflect the official positions of the United States Air Force, the
Department of Defense, or the federal government.
Tyler “Weasel” Flansburg, Captain, USAF
- Director of Operations, Air Force Materiel Command Detachment 2, Acquisition Instructor Course
Endnotes
- www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/csaf/CSAF_22/CSAF_22_Strategic_Approach_Accelerate_Change_or_Lose_31_Aug_2020.pdf General David W. Allvin. Memorandum: The Acquisition Instructor Course (AQIC). 19 Feb 2021.
- Interview with author
- Interview with author
- https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/500002p.pdf?ver=2020-01-23-144114-093
- Short
for development, security, and operations—automates the integration of
security at every phase of the software development lifecycle.
- https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/devsecops#:~:text=DevSecOps%E2%80%94short%20for%20development%2C%20security,%2C%20deployment%2C%20and%20software%20delivery.
- https://aia.mit.edu/
- https://gtri.gatech.edu/
- https://www.afwerx.af.mil/afventures.html
- http://82cons.com/services-table/
- https://www.capitalfactory.com/
- https://www.spacex.com/
- https://www.amazon.com/
- Interview with author
- Interview with author
The
plan is for AQIC graduates to bring up the next generation of
acquisition leaders while serving as this generation’s leaders
themselves. Key to that will be forging relationships across the
national security innovation base, innovative new companies, and the
vast federal acquisition innovation ecosystem. AQIC grads are expected
to leverage those connections to make better buys and help improve the
acquisition process itself.